My western digital 120gb passport external HDD won't show up on my computer anymore when i connect it?

Question

it is recognized as usb mass storage in the device manager, but i can't access it in my computer. (it doesn't show up as an icon) it was working just fine up until now and nothing hasn't been done out of the ordinary.

Answer 1

Go into the control panel
Click on the System icon
Click on the Harware tab
Click on the Device Manager button
Look for any items with a yellow ! triangle in front of them, and right click and uninstall them. That may resolve the issue.

If not, then expand the USB section of the hardware listing and uninstall everything in that section. Reboot and it will reinstall the USB drivers. After that the drive should work.